[Mournful braids.]] As a sign of mourning, especially for the loss of their husbands, the Hindústáni women collect their long hair into a braid, called in Sanskrit veṇi.
[The mango twig.]] We shall meet with several allusions to this tree as the favourite of Love and the darling of the bees.
CANTO THIRD.
[Who angers thee, &c.]] To understand properly this speech of Káma, it is necessary to be acquainted with some of the Hindú notions regarding a future state. "The highest kind of happiness is absorption into the divine essence, or the return of that portion of spirit which is combined with the attributes of humanity to its original source. This happiness, according to the philosopher, is to be obtained only by the most perfect abstraction from the world and freedom from passion, even while in a state of terrestrial existence.... Besides this ultimate felicity, the Hindús have several minor degrees of happiness, amongst which is the enjoyment of Indra's Swarga, or, in fact, of a Muhammadan Paradise. The degree and duration of the pleasures of this paradise are proportioned to the merits of those admitted to it; and they who have enjoyed this lofty region of Swarga, but whose virtue is exhausted, revisit the habitation of mortals."—Prof. Wilson's Megha Dúta. Compare also "The Lord's Song."—Specimens of Old Indian Poetry, pp. 67, 68.
Indra, therefore, may be supposed to feel jealous whenever a human being aspires to something higher than that heaven of which he is the Lord.
The "chain of birth" alluded to is of course the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, a belief which is not to be looked upon (says Prof. Wilson in the preface to his edition of the Sánkhya Káriká) as a mere popular superstition. It is the main principle of all Hindú metaphysics; it is the foundation of all Hindú philosophy. The great object of their philosophical research in every system, Brahminical or Buddhist, is the discovery of the means of putting a stop to further transmigration; the discontinuance of corporeal being; the liberation of soul from body.
[As on that Snake.]] Sesha, the Serpent King, is in the Hindú mythology the supporter of the earth, as, in one of the fictions of the Edda,—
"That sea-snake, tremendous curled,
Whose monstrous circle girds the world."
He is also the couch and canopy of the God Vishṇu, or, as he is here called, Krishṇa,—that hero being one of his incarnations, and considered identical with the deity himself.